Geezer's Sexagesimennial Romp

In summer of 2002 I determined that when I reached 60 years of
age in early July, 2003, I would run a series of races of a
variety of distances during that age year, or as close to it as
scheduling would allow. Now that I've passed the age 61 threshold,
with the addition of the 5K I ran this morning, the series is done
except for one omission. There is no entry for a 50-mile race, but
I'm planning a remedial solution in March, 2005.

A plain text table showing every race event I did during GSR's
duration is at the bottom. The best way to present commentary is
as a series of notes on each event in turn.

Overall

During the 366 days I claimed my age to be 60, I recorded a
total of 2445.74 pedestrian miles, an average of 6.69 miles per
day, 46.83 miles per week.

During the project, which slopped slightly over the ends of the
year on both edges, I ran a total of 505 miles in races.

In the course of things I added to this a 3.25-mile charity
walk and two all-night 12-hour runs. All were unofficial as far as
recording results, but formally sponsored and supported, not mere
personal training runs.

The only item in the list not attempted was the 50-miler. The
only one not completed was the 100-miler, which I DNFed at 80
miles. Some events I did or soon will do multiple times.

100 Meters

Here we find my most laughable performance, an astonishing
21.51 seconds. I believe a crippled grandmother pushing a
shopping cart with a bowling ball chained to her ankle could have
beat me.

There was no all-comers track meet that I could get to, so the
occasion for recording this was not really a race. Arizona Road
Racers (ARR) sponsors a series of informal open mile races.
Following the second, at which I got my mile PR, the timer sent me
down the track with a guy who had the starting gun, while he
remained at the end with the gizmo to record times.

I had never even practiced a 100 meter run ever in my life. And
I've never practiced starting one, which is probably the most
important part. I asked the guy with the gun whether you're
supposed to push off with your strong leg in back or forward. He
wasn't sure. It felt most natural for me to have my left leg back
— my strong leg. (I'm left-handed and left-footed.) But I
used no starting blocks, so it probably mattered little.

When the pistol went off I leapt in the air like a startled cat
and began flailing the air. It couldn't have been more inelegant.
A second or two was lost just getting moving. Suddenly I found
that my legs were still dead from the mile I'd finished twenty
minutes earlier. I was utterly unable to push hard enough to
stride, so just turned my legs over as fast as I could go,
laughing as I went.

I did try as hard as I could, knowing it would be over soon
enough. When I got to the end the timer asked me if I even wanted
to see my time, probably thinking it wouldn't matter. Of course it
mattered! I wasn't planning on humiliating myself again. At least
not this year.

So 21.51 it is and shall remain. I do believe I'm actually
capable of about 18 seconds with a little practice, which is still
a joke.

1 Mile

This I did three times, at ARR open mile track workouts. The
first was just an experiment to see if I could do it. I pushed as
hard as I could, went out too hard at the beginning, and nearly
DNFed at 200 meters — thought I was gonna die. When I came
around the first lap I was on a 7:25 pace. Somehow I survived, but
earned myself a major case of track hack, and didn't stop coughing
for over two hours.

The next session I managed the first lap better, and set my PR
of 8:22.99. The third time out I just couldn't keep up with that
pace.

I was satisfied with my 8:22. Even though I can't recall my
mile PR from high school, I believe it was somewhere around 9:15,
run under threat and duress. If so, in 42 years I've managed to
knock close to a minute off my mile. Not too bad for a geezer,
eh?

3.25 Mile Walk

This event was a charity event for children with diabetes,
participated in by several thousand people, most of them corporate
teams. The distance was not accurately measured, and results were
not taken, but Suzy wanted to do it because the bank she works for
was putting together a team, so I was happy to encourage that
endeavor.

I walked only, but power walked. It took at least ten minutes
to get across the starting line within a pack of lemmings, but
after that I must have passed one or two thousand strollers, and
was among the first to arrive back at the park. Leave it to me to
do "well" in an event that doesn't count. I ran another
9.40 miles later on, my real workout for the day.

5 Kilometers

Run today (July 18, 2004) to round out the series. I posted the
race report to Dead Runners Society. It was fun, and I would
certainly do it again, except it interrupted my training for
Javelina Jundred. Since I'm usually in the process of training for
something outlandish, I virtually never have the time or
inclination to train properly for shorter distances, so I may
never get around to another.

10 Kilometers

In early 1996 I ran Foothills 10K as my first race, ran it
three more years in a row, then not again until this year. I've
run one other 10K event once. I like Foothills because it's a fast
course and at a time of year that is usually good for me to do a
run of that distance. Each year I've set a new all-time PR until
this year, when I beat my first-ever time by five seconds, and was
geezerly proud of that.

Half Marathon

The Desert Classic is a low-key but well supported ARR club
race. I had a good day, considering I did no specific training,
and just showed up. My time for the race was exactly the same as
my watch time for my very first half marathon, America's Finest
City, in August, 1996, for which I trained for months like an
Olympian, unsure if I could make the distance. As noted in the PR
column I have since run this distance in 2:04:08 in training, also
once in 2:04:09, in what were two of the best runs of my life.

Marathon

Whiskey Row is considered an ultra by some people (though not
by me) because of the extreme hills. Regardless of the appellative
one uses to give it a handle, it's a tough course, not one on
which to seek an all-time PR. To the contrary, I got a PW out of
it. I chose this race, running it for the third time, simply
because it was convenient.

Someone suggested I might have been better off doing the full
marathon at Desert Classic and doing the half at Whiskey Row. From
a performance perspective this is true, but then I would have run
a full marathon along a boring canal, and would have missed seeing
the beautiful forests near Prescott.

50 Kilometers

Pemberton Trail is the same beautiful 15.4-mile trail on which
Javelina Jundred is run. I train on it frequently. My records
indicate that I have now done 21 full loops and several partial
loops. The PT50K race fell neatly into an available time slot, and
is run during a beautiful time of year. (Yes, early February is
beautiful for running here.) From this race I also took away my
all-time favorite running shirt.

12 Hours

A few days before I turned 60, the race committee for Across
the Years sponsored a non-competitive all-night 12-hour run at
Nardini Manor, the new site of Across the Years, on the newly
built track. It was a horribly muggy night. I was tired of being
there after a couple of hours, sat frequently, slept some, and
walked a lot.

This year the event was much better, mostly because it was held
a month earlier, when the temperature was comfortable for running
all night, and the humidity was also quite low. Despite having
completed a 24-hour race just a week before, I managed to find a
gear that kept me going. I went the entire race without sitting
down, and was immensely pleased that I was able to do as well as I
did so closely on the heels of a primary race.

50 Miles

As noted, I did not run a 50-miler during the GSR's duration,
entirely because there wasn't one that was both convenient and
doable. Zane Grey would have fit my schedule, but it's reputedly
the toughest 50M in the country, and quite clearly beyond of my
range of ability, so I didn't venture to attempt it.

Officially speaking, I've deferred that item, meaning that I'm
declaring GSR to be completed, but will make up the deficiency
later.

My first idea was to run Man Against Horse in Prescott the
first weekend in October, just four weeks before Javelina Jundred.
That might work, but then I decided I would get more benefit from
an all-night triple loop training run of Pemberton Trail (total
mileage 45.9 miles) being organized by a local runner in
preparation for Javelina.

As long as I was deferring the 50-mile race three months, it
might as well be pushed out a few more. Presently my plan is to do
Old Pueblo in southern Arizona on March 5 of next year. This is
reputedly one of the best 50-mile races in existence.

100 Miles Trail

Granted, I participated in Javelina Jundred last year, but back
problems obliged me to drop at 80 miles, 15 minutes short of 24
hours into the race, but with plenty of time left to finish within
the 30-hour cutoff. The drop rate for that race was 49%. I was
wide awake, otherwise strong, and raring to go, but my back would
not cooperate. For the sake of GSR I counted it as an act of
participation, but every ultrarunner knows what a DNF is.

Not one to be defeated easily, I am in training now to return
to Javelina on October 30, determined that this time, I will get
the job done.

24 Hours

FANS 24-hour race is in Minneapolis, and is run to obtain
scholarships for inner city youths.

At FANS I was plagued the last few hours by the identical back
problems that brought me down at Javelina. There is no DNF in a
fixed-time race, nor in this case was there any need to be one.
Other than the 12 minutes I sat in my chair at 4:00am, I
maintained forward progress and stayed on my feet the whole race.
Because my back problem slowed me down significantly, I missed a
PR by 0.9 miles, when at mid-race I was certain I was on pace to
get around 95 miles.

72 Hours

My third outing at 72 hours at Across the Years, my all-time
favorite race, was not only my best effort at that race, but
probably the best race I've ever run. I had a little problem with
needing sleep both the first and second days, which ate into my
mileage, but on the third day I came back exceptionally strong,
needing only 15 minutes rest the whole 24 hours. My 180.198 miles
was good enough to beat everyone but one man and one woman, both
record-holding elites orders of magnitude out of my class.

And So ...

Geezer's Sexagesimennial Romp is hereby declared to be a mostly
done deal.